Andrii Portnov, Profesor Instytutu Pileckiego - Instytut Pileckiego

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dr Andrii Portnov, Profesor Instytutu Pileckiego

Portrait photo: Andrii Portnov, Profesor Instytutu Pileckiego

e-mail: a.portnov@instytutpileckiego.pl

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1913-8811
Academia.edu: https://forum-transregionale-studien.academia.edu/AndriiPortnov

A historian, a graduate of Dnipro University (history) and the University of Warsaw (cultural studies), he defended his doctoral thesis at the Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv. Since 2012, he has lectured on various topics related to Central and Eastern Europe at Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin, the universities of Basel and Potsdam, the Free University of Brussels, SciencesPo Lyon, and others. He was also a researcher at the University of Geneva and a scholarship holder at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, the Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen (CERCEC) in Paris, the Institute for the Humanities (IWM) in Vienna, the Historisches Kolleg in Munich, and the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Sofia.

From 2018 to 2025, Andrij Portnov was a professor of Ukrainian history at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). In 2015, he initiated and co-founded the Berlin-Brandenburg Ukrainian Initiative (BBUI), which in 2016 became the PRISMA UKRAЇNA Research Network Eastern Europe at Forum Transregionale Studien Berlin. In July 2023, he was elected Full Professor at the Department of Philosophy of the Ukrainian Free University.

He is the author of more than 10 books and 250 scholarly publications on the intellectual history of Central and Eastern Europe, the history of totalitarianisms, Ukrainian historiography in the 20th century, the history of Polish-Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian relations, historical urbanism, genocide studies, and memory studies.

Research/academic interests

  • intellectual history of Central and Eastern Europe;
  • history of totalitarianisms;
  • Ukrainian and Polish historiography in the 20th century;
  • history of Polish-Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian relations;
  • historical urbanism;
  • genocide studies;
  • memory studies.

Awards and honors

  • Ab Imperio Book Prize for the monograph “Dnipro. An Entangled History of a European City” (2022);
  • DIALOG Prize from the Federal Association of German-Polish Societies (2022);
  • Baron Velge Prize from the Free University of Brussels for research on memory of the Second World War (2015);
  •  Yuri Shevelov Prize for the book “Historie do użytku domowego” (2013).  

Selected publications

Academic papers

  • Portnov Andrii, Konflikt und Dialog. Ukrainer, Russen und die ukrainische Frage, in: Osteuropa. 2025. No. 11–12. Pp. 27–54.
  • Portnov Andrii, Portnova Tetiana, Savchenko Serhii, Serhiienko Viktoriia, Whose Language Do We Speak? Some Reflections on the Master Narrative of Ukrainian History Writing, in: Ab Imperio, 2020, No. 4. Pp. 88–129.
  • Portnov Andrii, Der Holodomor als Genozid. Historiographische und juristische Diskussionen, in: Osteuropa. 2020. No. 1–2. Pp. 31–50.
  • Portnov Andrii, Post-Maidan Europe and the New Ukrainian Studies, in: Slavic Review, Winter 2015. Vol. 74. No. 4. Pp. 723–731.
  • Portnov Andrii, Historiografia ukraińska. Doświadczenia sowietyzacji, in: Pamięć i sprawiedliwość. 2014. No. 1. Pp. 401–429.
  • Portnov Andrii, Ukraińskie interpretacje rzezi wołyńskiej, in: Więź. 2013. No. 2. Pp. 158–166.

Monographs

Chapters in monographs

  • Portnov Andrii, Portnova Tetiana, The Issue of Colonialism in Ukrainian Historiography, 1900-Early 1930s, in: Unpredictable Past? Reshaping Russian, Ukrainian and East European Studies, ed. by Volodymyr Kravchenko and Marko Robert Stech. Edmonton – Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2024, pp. 214–233.
  • Portnov Andrii, The Soviet Past in Ukrainian Politics of Memory (1991–2017), in: Revolution and War. Ukraine and the Great Transformation of Modern Europe. Materials of the 1st conference of the German-Ukrainian Historical Commission, 28–29 May 2015 – Berlin, ed. by Yaroslav Hrytsak & Martin Schulze Wessel. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2024, pp. 130–164.
  • Portnov Andrii, Polish-Ukrainian Historical Controversies: An Oveview, in: The Politics of Memory in Poland and Ukraine. From Reconciliation to De-Conciliation, ed. by Tomasz Stryjek and Joanna Konieczna-Sałamatin, London – New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 21–35.
  • Portnov Andrii, The Holocaust in the Public Discourse of Post-Soviet Ukraine, in: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Ed. by Julie Fedor, Markku Kangaspuro, Jussi Lassila, Tatiana Zhurzhenko. London: Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, 2017, pp. 347–370.

 Textbooks

Volume editor

  • Portnov Andrii, Nataliia Kotenko-Vusatiuk (ed.), Dichtung der Verdammten. Eine Anthologie ukrainischer Dichtung. Auswahl und Nachdichtung von Oswald Burghardt (Jurij Klen). Wiesbaden: Arco, 2025. ISBN 978-3965870499.
  • Portnov Andrii, Lazarenko Olesia (ed.), Wiktoriia Kołosowa, Kyjiwskyj szodennyk. 1940–1945. Charków: Prawa ljudyny, 2021.
  • Portnov Andrii, Amacher Korine, Anouble Eric (ed.), Histoire partagée, mémoires divisées. Ukraine, Russie, Pologne. Lausanne: Editions Antipodes, 2021.
  • Portnov Andrii, Amacher Korine, Serhiienko Viktoriia (ed.), Official History in Eastern Europe. Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag, 2020. ISBN 978-3-944870-71-7.

 

Participation in academic and organizational activities

Participation in research projects

  • Research College “European Times” (2021–2026, https://european-times.eu/en/project/);
  • “Kleine Fächer – Große Potenziale. East European Studies in Potsdam and Frankfurt/Oder” (2019–2020, https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/osteuropastudien-in-brandenburg/);
  • “Modernisation of Identity?: Challenges of ‘Europeanisation’, Nationalism and Post-Sovietism for Memory Cultures” (2017–2019, Research Council of Lithuania);
  • “Divided Memories, Shared Memories, Ukraine / Russia / Poland (20th – 21st centuries): an Entangled History” (2016–2018, Swiss National Foundation);
  • “The Partitions of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Experiences and Tradition-building” (2004–2006, Volkswagen Foundation).

Membership in editorial bodies

Membership in academic bodies

  • Member of the Academic Advisory Council at the Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) in Leipzig (https://www.leibniz-gwzo.de/en/institute/institute/organisation/committees).

Membership in academic societies and organizations

  • Member of the German Association for East European Studies (DGO);
  • Member of the German Society of Historians of Eastern Europe (VOH);
  • Member of the German-Ukrainian Association (DUG).

Scholarships

  • Lesia Ukrainka Fellowship, Institute for the Humanities (IWM) in Vienna (2026);
  • Gerda-Henkel Fellowship, Center for Advanced Studies in Sofia (2025);
  • Guest Researcher Fellowship, Historiches Kolleg in Munich (2023);
  • Guest Researcher Fellowship, SciencesPo Paris (2016);
  • Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2014–2015);
  • Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2012–2014);
  • Guest Researcher Fellowship, Centre d’études des mondes russe, caucasien et centre-européen (CERCEC) in Paris (2010);
  • Guest Researcher Fellowship, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam (2007).